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Ashrat Damia
'Ashrat Damia '(July 26, 1992) is a merrois and a Thracian citizen. She was Dardani and Dersaii's birth mother. Bio Trivia (interactive) 01. Ashrat was born on July 26th, 1992 as one half of a set of twins. The other half was her sister, Shandei. They were born in the Florida Keys, mere feet from the shoreline of the Dry Tortugas at Bush Key. Their mother, Subesh Damia, was the matriarch-chieftaness of their pod. Their father, Pyrodus, was from another pod that he was accidentally separated from, and would have died if Subesh's hadn't found him. Ashrat and Shandei were neither their first nor last offspring--they had triplets, all boys, before them and an actual single birth (extremely rare among merrois) of another sister afterwards. All three births were timed about three years apart. 02. Ashrat's pod had breeding alliances with five other pods scattered around the Atlantic. All five are slightly larger than the average merrois pod--containing twenty-two to thirty members each--and usually only associate with each other after a crisis (such as a hurricane or tsunami) or when their children reach marriable ages. Their association time had been increasing, however, when Ashrat was banished. Subesh was urging the other five to pledge themselves to Thracia. 03. Ashrat saw Thrace only once--and that at a distance--before her banishment. It impacted her little, which grossly disappointed her mother. When Ashrat went to him in New York, she barely even remembered what he looked like. 04. Ashrat and Shandei's prospective mate that they were slated to compete for was a male from another pod named Deoph Pastet (the youngest son of the matriarch-chieftaness of the Pastet pod, the largest of the five other pods the Damia were allied with). Ashrat wasn't attracted to him--for merrois, attraction actually occurs after sexual contact--but she liked him as a person and thought she could be reasonably happy with him. One of Ashrat's top ten regrets about being banished is that she is, by law, never allowed to see him again. 05. When Ashrat was pregnant with Dardani and Dersaii, after she'd been told she was carrying girls, she gave each one a personal name that she addressed them by in her own head. (Never out loud--she had the distinct and probably correct impression that Thrace and Iesta would've disapproved) Dardani was Talman, Dersaii was Thelman. Interestingly, both names are religious-oriented. Talman means "holy," Thelman means "hallowed." 06. Ashrat was extremely nervous around Thrace every time she saw him, both before and after they conceived. It wasn't just that the mere fact of his existence scared her to death (which it did), it was also that she anticipated that she'd imprint on him once she was carrying his children. She was half-right. She didn't fall in love with him (a fact she's endlessly grateful to the merrois deities for), but she was extremely physically attracted to him throughout her entire pregnancy, and still was the last time she saw him. Thrace's reaction: Thrace sensed her fear and, while he tried not to scare her, he was secretly pleased by it. He was also pleased by her attraction, though he would never have let her act on it. 07. Ashrat hated being pregnant. It was weakening, it was uncomfortable, and it wrenched violently at her emotions, so that she could go from being perfectly happy to snarling with rage to sobbing for her mother and sister, all in the space of a few hours. She was also constantly hungry, tired, sore, and adjusting to desiring sex for the first time in her life. She firmly told anyone who ever asked that she was never, ever doing this for someone else again. 08. Ashrat genuinely liked Iesta. She didn't want to get attached to anyone in Thracia or Oshinurd, but Iesta was fairly nice to her, and in an odd way, reminded her of her own mother, which she found comforting. She practically glued herself to the older woman every chance she got, especially during the month she was supposed to spend "adjusting." Iesta's reaction: Iesta was initially pleased by this, but eventually found it irritating. 09. Ashrat left Oshinurd to go back to Earth and into the sea the same day the twins were born. Physically speaking, it was a very bad idea, as she hadn't healed yet and had no arrangements to sustain herself while she was too weak to hunt. She was only thinking of her emotions when she did it. She didn't think she'd be able to stand it if she had to look at the children she'd given birth to while she waited for her body to mend. Iesta's reaction:. This is one of the few things that made Iesta sympathetic towards Ashrat. She understands the fear of becoming too attached to one's children, and thinking about how much stronger that impulse is in a merrois than a chavrak actually made her feel guilty. 10. Ashrat formed her new pod off the New Jersey coast, in the waters her original pod had normally used as spawning grounds. She met three other separated merrois there, a male and two females. One of the females died of starvation within two days of Ashrat meeting her; she'd been on her own for weeks by the time she had ended up at the grounds, and was too far gone to hunt when she met the other merrois orphans. The other female had deliberately dispersed with the intention of starting a pod. Ashrat spent days fighting her and ultimately killed her for the right to claim the orphaned male as her own mate. 11. Ashrat's mate is nineteen, and named Georth Artima. He was separated from his pod when it split into two units and he confused the new migration plans. A freak ice storm did the rest of the work. He was originally from off the coast of Maine. The two found they hunted well together, and liked each other enough for it to be a working match. She told him everything about her banishment, her agreement with Thrace and the kenthas she gave birth to. He handled it all very well, which made Ashrat certain that it wouldn't take them long to grow to love each other. They conceived their first offspring the same day that she claimed him. 12. Ashrat's second children were born very prematurely, even for merrois babies. It was the result of a combination of factors, including that she was young and smallish, that it had only been a few weeks since she had last given birth, she wasn't very well fed (she and Georth had not established themselves on a decent hunting ground yet) and she was also recuperating from the battles with the other female to claim her mate. The number of offspring this second time was also higher: she gave birth to four, a female and three males. The female died within twenty-four hours of being born, but the three males eventually strengthened and began to thrive. Ashrat very seriously believes this is all because she left her first daughters behind. Her sons are named Gael, Iesto and Thraco. Georth has never questioned this. 13. Ashrat's new pod also includes two dispersed mating pairs she and Georth met off the coast of Newfoundland. The females of those pairs are Peme and Noemata. The males are Byros and Tartath. All of them, including Georth, are now surnamed "Damia." Despite being the founder of their pod, Ashrat still didn't expect to become the actual matriarch-chieftaness. She was incredibly surprised when she was given the position in a unanimous vote by the others. Particularly because, with the exception of her children, she's the youngest member of the group. 14. Ashrat doesn't know the reason she was voted into the position was because the others learned from Georth of her experiences in Thracia and Oshinurd, and decided that she'd be the best one to represent them in any encounters with the Old One that's steadily taking over the entire ocean. If she knew, she'd retire immediately. She doesn't think she's, by any stretch of the imagination, the best representative her pod could present to Thracia. It's hard to feel you're in much of a position to deal politically with someone when they've seen you as a half-starved, helpless orphan. 15. While all merrois pods, including Damia II, are semi-migratory, Ashrat's does spend most of its time off the coast of Newfoundland. This is for a number of reasons, but the biggest are that she's avoiding Florida and New York, and that the land in Canada is generally a neutral zone for Old Ones. She doesn't know if any besides Thrace are aquatic or interested in taking oceanic territory, but better safe than sorry. 16. Ashrat cried the first time she was called "Mala" (the infantile merrois word for "mother") by one of her sons. It didn't help that the first one to do so was Thraco. 17. When Ashrat learned that one of the daughters she'd given Thrace had died and that the other had very nearly died along with her, she was sick with it for days. It was one of the few times she ever appeared to her new pod to regret her decision. Ultimately, however, she found she felt far more sorry for Iesta than she did for herself. She offered to include one of her female enemies in her next tribute, if she and Thrace felt they wanted to have other half-merrois offspring. 18. Ashrat did agree to let Dardani meet her half-brothers without making her meet her, on the condition that Georth be present to take care of them and generally supervise them. He told her later that Dardani seemed healthy, strong and intelligent, though quiet and reserved. She appreciated this, although she didn't speak to him for about a day when he told her that Dardani looked a bit like her. Dardani's reaction: Dardani didn't like being told of her physical resemblance to her birth mother any more than Ashrat did. 19. Ashrat can't tell if Dardani imprinted on her sons or not, and the question has worried her ever since. Ashrat wonders why not, if she didn't, but genuinely fears the idea that she did. It would mean that she will have to arrange more meetings for the siblings and possibly have to see Dardani herself, which she doesn't want to do. It's not that she doesn't care about her daughter, it's that she tries very hard not to think of Dardani as being her daughter. Furthermore, she doesn't want to see more of Thrace than she absolutely has to. That part of her life is over and done with. She provided a service, she was rewarded with a family and an ally. As far as she knows, her first mate and first child don't want her in their lives any more than she wants them in hers. She just wishes she could tell for sure if her sons will feel that way. 20. Ashrat regrets a lot of things about her surrogacy for Thrace and Iesta. She regrets that it didn't occur to her to ask to meet any of their older children (or those children's birth mothers) before offering them new ones. She regrets that she mated with anyone other than the man she ended up marrying. She regrets that she never saw her daughters or touched them or told them their names in her language. She regrets that one of her daughters died. Despite all this, she doesn't regret that she did it. She looks at the pod and family she has now, and thinks, every time, it was worth it. Category:Characters Category:Inactive Characters Category:Merrois